Field of the Invention
This invention relates to multimedia commerce delivery to end-users, and more specifically to delivery of a branded commerce environment to end-user devices, such as a ‘smart TV.’
Discussion of the Related Art
As the Internet came to its first platform, the connected PC, online commerce emerged as an incredible economic powerhouse. The business-use paradigm of the PC, with its powerful capabilities, enabled the emergence of the browser, a processing and memory hungry on-line client. Along with the application server, which could be placed in a hosting location and accessed worldwide, the browser became a full-blown applications platform. Complicated shopping and purchasing functions could be accommodated, yielding a chapter in history generally referred to as ‘e-commerce’.
The browser has continued to emerge as a flexible client-side applications platform, capable of handling a mixture of all kinds of content (e.g., with HTML5 for example), downloaded code to enhance the user experience (e.g., Java-script), and different types of media (e.g., audio, video, and animation such as Flash). The browser becomes a very specific application, depending on where you ‘point’ it. The browser paradigm is perfectly suited to the PC.
As mobile technologies emerged, several attempts where made to re-create the e-commerce platform of the PC. However, mobile devices have significant limitations. For instance, the screen and keyboard capabilities were much more limited than the PC. In addition, the processing power in a mobile device is limited both by the target cost of the device and by the available power consumption. First attempts at text-based browsers, such as wireless application protocol (WAP), were very limiting. When smart-phones emerged, ports of the full browser to the mobile environment also yielded poor results. Full browser applications were very slow, inappropriately matched to screen size, and provided an overall unsatisfactory application user experience compared to ‘native’ phone applications. Certain aspects of the phone also changed the application possibilities radically, such as the SMS capabilities, the location awareness capabilities, and the ability to integrate with voice in several dimensions.
As mobile devices became more powerful, essentially providing PC power in a small form factor, even though the browser could be made to work well enough, what emerged was an ‘app’ paradigm, which doesn't look like a browser at all. In stark contrast with the PC, the model of the ‘there's an app for that’, where the app is precisely tailored to one task or one brand, with the application being location or voice enabled in just the right way, proved to be a good use-model for the smart phone. In fact, when one looks at the other mobile platforms, such as tablets, and the like, this use-mode only represents an incremental improvement. Even given its limitation, every retailer and company rushed out to build an app that would provide ‘brand identity’ into the mobile marketplace. They could use their app to capture e-commerce on the phone, and through the app, build a relationship directly with the consumer.
For mobile environments and technology infrastructure, app developers realized that the server side was generating a great deal of content and would still require the networked technologies of the application server. It was also realized that to handle a mixture of all kinds of content, downloaded code, and several types of media in the app, the app could be built out of the same parts that the browser was constructed out of, but in the final build process the elements could be bound together as a purpose-built ‘native’ phone app. And so many of today's apps are built using ‘web kit’ technology, which are browser modules connected together as such. In fact, the modern open source browsers themselves are constructed out of the same web kit. So while there is quite a different use-model for applications on the PC (e.g., websites through the browser) as compared to mobile (i.e., a focused-purpose app), the actual client-side technology is largely shared.
Recently, the television has become an Internet-connected device. For instance, an Internet-connected game console extends the console gaming experience to a network gaming experience. An Internet-connected Blu-Ray player and some of the first ‘smart TVs’ were host to ‘alternate channels’ for entertainment content. For the same reason as with mobile, when the browsers were developed on the TV, they were resource constrained. As a result, they didn't provide an optimal consumer experience, and were certainly not capable of being the powerful platform that they were for the PC. So the ‘apps’ model was utilized, lifted from mobile environment for use with ‘smart televisions’. For instance, one could rent or watch movies and shows from on-line sites such as NetFlix or Hulu, or listen to Internet Radio from places such as Pandora. One could use media sources such as iTunes for video and music and sources like Flickr for viewing photos uploaded to the Internet. Also, viewing platforms such as YouTube were available for viewing user-posted videos.
Many platforms emerged enabling developers to create TV apps much in the same way as mobile apps were created. Some of the first smart TVs actually utilized a mobile operating system mimicking precisely the app-use model. The ‘one app, one channel’ model was a simple first paradigm. The lack of a keyboard or a precision pointing device, such as a mouse, did not detract from the value proposition, because on the TV the interaction mode was largely passive, and more of the apps were just for passive watching of video, allowing users access to Internet video content for free or very low ‘all-you-can-eat’ subscription models. Despite the rather limited capabilities, they provided the novelty of Internet content on ‘the big screen’, and the interest of the consumer in these new ‘internet video on-demand’ and ‘Internet channels’ became popular. With well-understood on-demand and subscription rate business models, simple apps and the services behind them have been popular for consumers looking for alternative entertainment.
But for television, the success of the mobile app paradigm proved more challenging. If an app only provided video, then sufficient performance was available, where even if the menus on the app seemed sparse on the big screen, eventually the video filled it. But other apps, adapted from mobile, provided poor quality on the big screen. The use of low-resolution graphics, the lack of streaming embedded video, and the sparse and simple visual presentation were clear mismatches for the television platform. For instance, the ‘home theater’ environment is expected to provide an ear-popping audio experience, but web sites and mobile apps didn't typically utilize audio, and if they did, it wasn't surround sound. The mobile apps that ended up specifically adapted to location-based services, or communications such as SMS, video calling, and email, found themselves without these features on the television.
The expectation of the experience on the TV, Internet connected or not, is so much higher, that even a high fidelity rendering of a web site designed for a PC, or TV adaptation of a mobile app, may not be compelling in this more passive entertainment-driven interaction mode. The television is capable of displaying not only the highest quality, studio mastered video and audio content to the consumer, but also equally spectacular studio-polished production content and experience in television advertising. In fact, television advertising very much drives television programming. Television is ideal for brands as a portal to the consumer. Of all media available to brands and advertisers, from print to radio to web sites to billboards and everything in between, television is the premier vehicle by which a brand and advertisers can get their most sophisticated and polished message and position to the consumer. The current Internet connected TV has neglected this. The Internet banner ad is simply not sufficient for brand ad advertisers in the television domain.
Therefore, a new paradigm is needed for the TV, which, like mobile, does not rely on a paradigm of an all-powerful local browser, where the specific capabilities of the television are leveraged, and where brands and advertisers are provided a platform that can scale up to the high resolutions TVs, and can deliver the spectacular studio-polished production visual and audio experiences that they are accustomed to delivering.